10 October 2010

Raedwald and history

Been wanting to add the boat-dwelling author of Raedwald (the name of his boat) to the Soothscribe Laureates, but have been stopped by a suspicion that he looks back on British history through rose-coloured specs.

Today's post comes to confirm my suspicion. "What, if I had the choice, would I leave a future Britain by 2020?" he asks. There follows a list wildly beyond any political possibilities there have ever been or ever will be. It would be sadistic to deal with all of them, but these two go to the heart of them all:

A moral nation - the wealthy and privileged as well as the wretched underclass have rotted the moral foundation on which good society must be based; greed, sloth and lust are not 'lifestyle choices', envy and materialism pit man against man. A virtuous people and the open recognition of the fundamental Christian values at the centre of our lives and our nation.

"Rotted" affirms that there once was such a moral foundation. There was not. The future Pope Pius II found the English and Scots to be a bunch of drunken fornicators in 1435, and so they have remained.

Freedom - Britons can once again become the most free nation on the earth; free from persecution, coercion, injustice and the oppression of the evil that is socialism and free to speak, communicate, gather and make decisions ourselves with strong and independent recourse against the power of the State

Individual freedom relative to other nations probably peaked - in England, not collectivist Scotland and certainly not Wales or Ireland - under Elizabeth I. Things began to go to shit after the union with Scotland, only fully consummated in 1707. For the founding mythology of a uniquely free and prosperous Britain, see Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 (1992).

So if we want to get seriously nostalgic, we'd best start by cutting loose Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, which would certainly require leaving the EU as well.